http://www.tlarson.com/blog/2005/10/26/flying-car-part-2/ What's Tyler Larson stumbled into today? Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:52:50 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 http://www.tlarson.com/blog/2005/10/26/flying-car-part-2/comment-page-1/#comment-65 Ben Mullett Tue, 13 Dec 2005 11:39:46 +0000 http://www.tlarson.com/blog/?p=22#comment-65 Greetings, Tyler, and thanks for an excellent site, with (amongst much else) a fascinating evaluation of the 'flying car' as of today. My money is on Larry Neal to get a SkyCycle sorted well enough to function, if he hasn't done that already - but why can I not find SkyCycle updates since July '05 on the website? Whether it is then truly practical, is another matter - not in a wet climate, but maybe good in a warm one. Less sure about his Flying Car - I think the weight penalty may prove insuperable with available hardware. Sean Cooper has repeated Igor Bensen's 1960s road-riding gyro, so far as I can see - worth exploring, but needs refinement. The PALV, what can I say about the PALV guys? They clearly own some neat 3D graphic design software, and call themselves designers. One of their efforts appeared in our rotorcraft magazine (http://www.GyroFlight.org/) as a humourous cautionary tale - thought they were joking! And in a sense they must be, since any analysis of their rotor disk loading puts the take-off and landing speed too near their surprisingly high maximum speed (close to the existing world speed record!) to be smart. It's all lovely cosmetics - and it seems likely that no rotorcraft engineer has been near that 'design'. Me? I design real rotorcraft (www.BRAGgroup.com) that really fly (straight off the drawing board), albeit still in smaller scale (big stuff co$t$, in time and money), and I'm volunteer tech. ed. at GyroFlight magazine. NO cars planned, yet. Thanks again, and best regards, Ben Mullett Greetings, Tyler, and thanks for an excellent site, with (amongst much else) a fascinating evaluation of the ‘flying car’ as of today.
My money is on Larry Neal to get a SkyCycle sorted well enough to function, if he hasn’t done that already – but why can I not find SkyCycle updates since July ’05 on the website? Whether it is then truly practical, is another matter – not in a wet climate, but maybe good in a warm one. Less sure about his Flying Car – I think the weight penalty may prove insuperable with available hardware.
Sean Cooper has repeated Igor Bensen’s 1960s road-riding gyro, so far as I can see – worth exploring, but needs refinement.
The PALV, what can I say about the PALV guys? They clearly own some neat 3D graphic design software, and call themselves designers.
One of their efforts appeared in our rotorcraft magazine (http://www.GyroFlight.org/) as a humourous cautionary tale – thought they were joking! And in a sense they must be, since any analysis of their rotor disk loading puts the take-off and landing speed too near their surprisingly high maximum speed (close to the existing world speed record!) to be smart. It’s all lovely cosmetics – and it seems likely that no rotorcraft engineer has been near that ‘design’.
Me? I design real rotorcraft (www.BRAGgroup.com) that really fly (straight off the drawing board), albeit still in smaller scale (big stuff co$t$, in time and money), and I’m volunteer tech. ed. at GyroFlight magazine. NO cars planned, yet.
Thanks again, and best regards, Ben Mullett

]]>